Military Affairs: Year In Review 2002

The spectre of nuclear weapons reappeared on the world stage in 2002 even as the Cold War superpowers withdrew from the nuclear arms control treaties of the past. Governments began to act decisively to control international terrorism. NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders. Armed conflict continued in Afghanistan, Colombia, Israel, the Caucasus region, and elsewhere—and a U.S. attack on Iraq seemed inevitable for much of the year. Conflicts wound down in Africa and Sri Lanka.

Nuclear Weapons, Arms Control, and Disarmament

After having given the required six months’ notice, the United States formally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia in June in order to pursue the development of a ballistic missile defense system. Construction of six underground silos to house missile interceptors began in Alaska. Under the ABM Treaty such construction was prohibited. In response, Russia withdrew from the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks II (START II) treaty with the U.S. Although never implemented, START II would have reduced the number of nuclear warheads in each side’s arsenal to between 3,000 and 3,500.

Pres. George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed an agreement in May to reduce each side’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by two-thirds over 10 years. The remarkably brief 475-word document, dubbed the Treaty of Moscow, required that each side reduce its arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear warheads but did not define how the numbers should be counted or how each side’s nuclear force should be structured.

In November more than 90 countries signed the International Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (ICOC). Although the code lacked the legal force of an international treaty, it sought to restrict the export of ballistic missiles and their related technologies to countries of concern by requiring signatories to conduct their affairs more openly. The ICOC built on the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, which was supported by 33 countries.

In March the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a confidential document, was leaked to journalists. The document revealed the willingness of the government to break a long-standing commitment that the U.S. would abstain from using nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states. The NPR suggested that nuclear weapons could be used in retribution for attacks against the U.S. using biological or chemical weapons and that small accurate “mininukes” could be used against well-protected underground bunkers. Britain’s defense minister, Geoff Hoon, announced that his government too reserved the right to use nuclear weapons if Britain or British troops were threatened by biological or chemical weapons.

North Korea allegedly admitted that it had nuclear weapons but later claimed that it was merely reasserting its “right” to possess them. The government in Pyongyang rejected calls for United Nations inspectors to be allowed to verify that there were no such weapons or a program to develop them in the country. Israel was reported to be arming three of its new diesel-electric submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missiles as a means of enhancing its deterrent against foreign aggression.

Global Terrorism

The number of terrorist incidents remained high in many places throughout the world. Although some were isolated criminal acts, others were the work of international terrorist organizations.

Several states began taking tough measures to eradicate terrorist groups. In response to the terrorist bombings of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. President Bush signed into law in November the Homeland Security Act, the most sweeping change in the U.S.’s security infrastructure since the 1940s. The act created the Department of Homeland Security, which was to have about 170,000 employees and merge the functions of 22 existing agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Border Patrol. Bush announced in June that because of the growing threat of global terrorism, the United States reserved the right to launch preemptive strikes without warning against terrorist states or groups suspected of plotting to use weapons of mass destruction against American targets. Similarly, following the mass hostage-taking incident in Moscow in October (seebelow), the Kremlin announced that it was prepared to strike preemptively across international borders in order to stop terrorist actions. In December, Australian Prime Minister John Howard angered several Asian countries when he announced that he was prepared to order preemptive strikes against terrorists anywhere in the region. Nearly 200 people, including many foreign tourists, had been killed when a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali was bombed by terrorists. Australia, which counted about 90 of its citizens among the dead, put its security forces on a high state of alert after the attack.

Other incidents of terror included a suicide bombing in Karachi, Pak., in May that killed 14 people, including 11 French defense consultants helping Pakistan build submarines. In October a French oil tanker, the Limburg, was crippled by a blast off the coast of Yemen that killed one crewman. Government officials in both France and Yemen believed that the blast was the result of a suicide attack by a small boat. On November 28 terrorists made two attacks on targets in Mombasa, Kenya. In one, two shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles were fired at an Israeli jet flying tourists home from Kenya, but the missiles missed their target. At nearly the same time, 16 people died when suicide bombers attacked an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan capital.

In October the Pentagon agreed to deploy several RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low aircraft to help federal, state, and local law-enforcement officials capture a sniper terrorizing the Washington, D.C., area. More than 1,000 personnel were engaged in the hunt for the culprits in a three-week shooting spree that left 10 people dead and 3 wounded.

Other Conflicts

Former Soviet Union

In April the first of 150 U.S. Special Operations Forces troops arrived in Georgia to train local forces in antiterrorist operations. Georgia had requested American help in defeating guerrilla forces entrenched in the Pankisi Gorge region, which borders Russia’s rebellious republic of Chechnya. U.S. officials believed that the Georgian guerrillas could be linked to al-Qaeda.

In the same month, Russia’s intelligence agency, the FSB, announced that it had assassinated a Saudi-born Chechen field commander known as Khattab. Chechen forces acknowledged the death, saying that Khattab had received a poisoned letter. In November a Chechen ambush killed Russia’s Lieut. Gen. Igor Shifrin, commander of the army’s Chief Special Construction Directorate.

A Chechen suicide squad of more than 40 guerrillas seized control of a Moscow theatre in October and held hostage nearly 700 members of the audience and performers for three days. The incident came to a tragic conclusion when Russian security forces used a powerful opium-based narcotic gas to incapacitate the guerrillas: at least 119 hostages were killed and more than 245 hospitalized, most as a result of inhaling the gas. Following the incident, Russia canceled plans to recall some of the 80,000 troops that it had stationed in Chechnya and instead stepped up military operations in the republic.

Latin America

Colombia’s 38-year-old civil war intensified despite hopes that peace talks would lead to an early cease-fire. Pres. Andrés Pastrana Arango ended the talks in February after FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas hijacked a civilian airliner. Pastrana then launched a major military offensive against FARC strongholds. The U.S. was drawn deeper into the war and deployed army special forces (Green Berets) to train government troops in counterinsurgency operations. Previous U.S. military aid had been restricted to the war on drugs. The number of American troops in Colombia grew to an estimated 400.

Elements of Venezuela’s armed forces attempted to stage a coup against elected Pres. Hugo Chávez Frias in April. After being deposed for a mere two days, however, Chávez staged a surprising comeback with the support of loyal officers and many ordinary citizens. Chávez announced in October that another coup attempt had been thwarted.

Middle East

Following a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that killed scores of citizens, Israel mounted a six-week offensive in the West Bank in March. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rounded up thousands of suspected militants and carried out dozens of “targeted killings” of what it considered leading militants. The IDF also destroyed Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s headquarters in Ram Allah. Following more suicide bombings it conducted a similar offensive in June and July. Palestinian agencies and some international organizations accused the IDF of numerous human rights abuses.

British and U.S. aircraft patrolled the northern and southern “no-fly zones” over Iraq throughout the year. In the first 10 months of 2002, coalition aircraft attacked Iraqi air-defense sites nearly 60 times, and the number of incidents increased as speculation grew that a war to topple the Iraqi regime was forthcoming. In October the U.S. Air Force announced that it had begun using armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to strike targets in the “no-fly zone” over southern Iraq. Inspectors from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) began arriving in Iraq in November on a mission to assess whether the country was in compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions that required Iraq to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programs and eliminate its stockpiles of ballistic missiles with a range longer than 150 km (1 km = 0.6 mi).

South Asia

For several weeks during the year, a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan seemed a possibility, and several countries advised their citizens to leave the region. Tensions soared in May following a guerrilla attack on an Indian military base in the disputed region of Kashmir. India said that the attackers were based in Pakistan, but the government in Islamabad denied the accusation. Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged mortar, artillery, and machine-gun fire across their international border for weeks afterward, and the two sides deployed up to a million troops in total along the border. Dozens of civilians and soldiers on both sides were killed during the exchanges, and thousands of civilians were forced to flee.

The two nuclear rivals each tested new missile systems in 2002. In April India fired a supersonic cruise missile that it had developed jointly with Russia. Named Brahmos, the missile was claimed to be capable of delivering a 200-kg (440-lb) conventional warhead to ranges of 300 km. Over a span of several days in May, Pakistan tested three types of new ballistic missile. The Ghaznavi had a range of 290 km and had not been test-launched before. The 1,500-km-range Ghauri and 2,900-km-range Shaheen were also fired during the tests. The three types—all named after medieval Afghan Muslim warriors who had invaded India—gave Pakistan the ability to strike targets anywhere on the subcontinent.

Nepal’s six-year war against Maoist rebels intensified. Hundreds of government troops and guerrillas, as well as hundreds of civilians, were killed.

Nineteen countries contributed approximately 4,500 troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. ISAF was mandated by the UN Security Council to assist the interim government in Afghanistan in bringing security and stability to Kabul. During the year ISAF mounted thousands of joint patrols with Afghan security forces in and around the Afghan capital. It also disposed of millions of unexploded munitions, helped rebuild local infrastructure, and trained elements of the new Afghan National Guard. The biggest U.S. ground offensive of the war took place in March. Dubbed Operation Anaconda, the two-week campaign to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shah-e Kot Valley left eight U.S. soldiers dead, plus a disputed number of enemy casualties. At year’s end the United States still maintained about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, and continued factional fighting in the country did not augur well for their early withdrawal.

The government of Sri Lanka and rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam agreed to a permanent cease-fire in February as a step toward ending the 19-year civil war. During peace talks in September, the Tamil Tigers dropped their demand for full independence, and additional talks occurred in October and December.

East and Southeast Asia

In June U.S. marines engaged Muslim guerrillas in combat in the Philippines for the first time. About 1,200 U.S. troops were in the country to train government forces to combat indigenous guerrilla movements and were given permission to assist Philippine troops in front-line operations against groups such as Abu Sayyaf.

Nearly 800 people were killed in the first six months of 2002 in fighting between Indonesian troops and the rebel Free Aceh Movement. The number of human rights abuses committed by both sides was reported to have soared.

A South Korean patrol boat was sunk in a naval clash with North Korea in June. The incident took place in a disputed part of the Yellow Sea and left 4 South Korean sailors dead and 19 wounded. More than 100 South Korean fishing boats operating in the area were evacuated. Following a period of increased tension between North Korea and the U.S., both sides announced the end of the 1994 agreed framework that saw North Korea forgo its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for annual supplies of fuel oil and the construction of two modern nuclear power plants.

Africa

Hundreds of people were killed in fighting between Algerian government forces and Islamist rebel groups during the year. The government announced in February that it had killed Antar Zouabri, the leader of the Armed Islamic Group. Dozens of citizens were killed in bombings in July during celebrations of Algeria’s 40th anniversary of independence. In April the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague delimited a 1,000-km stretch of border between Ethiopia and Eritrea that the two countries had fought over in 1998–2000.

Angolan army troops killed longtime UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in February, a move that led to the signing of a peace accord between the two sides in April. (SeeObituaries.) The 27-year conflict was Africa’s longest civil war.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in July to end the four-year war that had left an estimated two million people dead. Although there were outbreaks of fighting between local groups afterward, Rwandan and most Ugandan troops (who had supported rebels inside the country) pulled out of the DRC in October. Troops sent by Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to aid the Congolese army were also repatriated under the arrangement. UN peacekeepers and about 1,000 Ugandan troops remained in the DRC to prevent fighting between local militia groups.

Uganda sent thousands of troops into southern Sudan in March to try to wipe out the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. At least 67 rebels were killed during a later raid, in June, which had the approval of the Sudanese government under an agreement signed in March.

Fighting broke out between government forces and rebels in Côte d’Ivoire in September. The civil war began when government forces crushed an attempted mutiny by elements of the army. Gen. Robert Gueï, the Ivoirian former military leader, was killed during the attempted mutiny. (SeeObituaries.) Hundreds of soldiers and civilians were subsequently killed on both sides. France sent several hundred troops to the capital, Yamoussoukro, and the main city of Abidjan in order to protect French and other foreign nationals.

Military Technology

For the first time ever, the U.S. Army shot down an artillery shell in flight by using a high-powered laser. The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser, a joint project with Israel, was test-fired in November. An earlier version of the system had been used to shoot down Russian Katyusha rockets in 2000. A modified Boeing 747-400 jet carrying a laser capable of shooting down ballistic missiles in flight was flight-tested for the first time in July. The U.S. Airborne Laser (ABL) program envisioned a fleet of seven such aircraft to be part of the country’s defenses against ballistic missile attack. The test flight marked the beginning of accelerated development of a national missile-defense system that became possible once the constraints of the ABM Treaty had been removed. (SeeSpecial Report.)

The X-45A unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) made its first flight in May, reaching a maximum airspeed of 360 km/hr (195 knots) and an altitude of 2,275 m (7,500 ft). The UCAV would preclude the need to send manned aircraft on a range of combat missions. Advances in military capabilities were sometimes little more than new applications of an existing technology; for example, in August Colombian troops seized nine remote-control model airplanes that rebel FARC troops were planning to fill with explosives.

The requirement for troops to fight for many hours and perhaps even days without a normal rest was seen as a key to success in future conflicts. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was developing drugs to help troops manage stress and sleep deprivation. The Continuous Assisted Performance program included research into areas such as altering the body’s metabolism so that it could use lipids as a source of energy rather than the normal carbohydrates.

Britain announced that its Defence Science and Technology Laboratory had developed an electrically charged hull to protect armoured vehicles against antitank grenades and shells. Known as the Pulsed Power System, the new armour used a highly charged capacitor to create a force field that would vaporize incoming metal objects before they could penetrate the vehicle’s hull.

Military and Society

History caught up with a number of war criminals in 2002. In July a Florida court found two retired Salvadoran generals guilty of having been responsible for the torture of civilians during El Salvador’s civil war more than two decades earlier. The court ordered the generals, who were residing in the U.S., to pay $54.6 million in damages to three of the victims. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, the former Argentine military dictator, was arrested in July and charged with offenses relating to the kidnapping and murder of domestic opponents during the so-called Dirty War of the 1980s. Warrants were also issued for the arrest of more than 30 other members of Galtieri’s military administration. At least 9,000 and possibly as many as 30,000 people had “disappeared” during the Dirty War. A Chilean judge sentenced 11 former members of the military services and one civilian to prison terms for their role in the murder of a union leader in 1982 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

In July the head of the Ukrainian air force was arrested, the chief of staff of the armed forces fired, and the defense minister asked to resign as a consequence of the world’s worst-ever air-show disaster, the crash of an Su-27 jet fighter in Lviv that killed 76 people and injured more than 100. (SeeDisasters.)

Armed Forces, Politics, and the Environment

In August NATO scrapped its main rapid-reaction unit, the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force, after Britain withdrew its contribution to ensure that troops would be available to support any U.S. attack on Iraq. Then, at its November summit in Prague, NATO announced that it was creating a new rapid-reaction unit called the NATO Response Force that would be able to deploy up to 20,000 troops within 7–10 days. The summit was also used to announce the extension of NATO membership to seven more European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). The move brought to 26 the number of NATO member states and for the first time brought the alliance into direct geographic contact with Russia’s borders. In May, before it expanded its membership eastward, NATO had formalized its relationship with its former Cold War enemy by forming the new NATO-Russia Council. The arrangement was aimed at fostering greater cooperation in areas such as crisis management, peacekeeping, and search-and-rescue operations.

Germany undertook its largest naval deployment since World War II when it took command of a multinational antiterror operation in the Horn of Africa. Twelve warships from Germany and other European countries conducted surveillance and intelligence-gathering activities around the Red Sea, the Somali coast, and the Gulf of Aden in search of evidence of activity by members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The dispute over the U.S. Navy’s continued use of a bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques continued. Protesters attempted to disrupt a military exercise on the island in September, even though the navy had agreed to use only inert ordnance.

A UN Environment Programme task force found evidence of contamination from depleted uranium (DU) ammunition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During its 1995 bombing campaign against Serb forces in Bosnia, NATO used armour-piercing munitions that contained DU, a slightly radioactive heavy metal. The UN task force identified three sites that it judged potential health hazards to people living nearby.

On the 60th anniversary of the World War II Battle of El-Alamein, the Egyptian government claimed that there were still approximately 20 million pieces of unexploded ordnance—of which 5 million were land mines—in the area around the site of the famous clash, which had pitted the forces of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel against British Lieut. Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s 8th Army.